Winter Sketches: Sunshine Meditation

Last Updated on November 28, 2016 by Patrick

What do you folks think a visual artist does first when starting to create one’s work of art? The said visual artist sketches. ;)

I’ve started winter sketches with a goal in mind: meditation. But not just any kind of meditation, or the falsely known kind of meditation from the Western schools of thought, but a sunshine meditation.

When you immerse yourself in snow it feels good as if you would be covered by the protective blanket of Nature. But don’t stay there too much because it gets cold! Entropy can take you. This is the power of meditation: don’t sleep too much! You could miss the sun shining.

We had plenty of sunshine this particular winter and, although I wasn’t quite satisfied with this, I had to accept the fact that this was a reminder of the future summer that can bring not only lots of sun, but also lots of hot air. May I dream? Hot air? May I dream of hot air baloon travelling around the world? Or at least around my country.

It is not about adaptation to the situations when one has to make do with one has got, but about intelligence, meaning doing the right thing, and wisdom, meaning how one does it. :)

Photography, for me, is not a form of art, nor a form of language, but more that this, a form of meditation. Capturing the scenes, the moments or their essence is not for mear display on a website or two, to gather as many likes and appreciations as one could possibly get, but to share wonders of the real world, not from the eyes of the beholder’s point of view, but from the point of view of the one who contemplates them.

This is not subjective, therefore not belonging to any form of opinion. Let us remember that opinions are made to change. Of course, many would say “doesn’t the ‘real world’ change continuously?”, and they wouldn’t be wrong. But when one meditates, contemplates, reaches the essence of things, one understands that there is something else that is real and doesn’t change.

The music of the world would not be made, played, interpreted by anyone if there was no creator behind it. This creator I’m talking about doesn’t change. This creator has no beginning nor any end. This creator was always here and now, always creating. How come? Just like this! :) Can’t you see? He creates the same things over and over again, and we see them as changing. :D How narrow our vision is!

When we meditate we learn to create. The artist begins with sketches, then continues with blocks of colours or tones, ideas, concepts etc., then with gestures or suggestions, other ideas, other concepts and so forth.

What do you think winter does? Do you not know that plants, trees, flowers meditate also in the “coldness” of winter? Behind the covers of snow and any other phenomena winter has to offer, all the natural souls don’t sleep but meditate. Meditation for them is true sleep, not being asleep but relaxing being awake.

I raise my face to the sky when snowing. Flakes like stars of the sky, but cold as the moon, start to caress my cheeks, my chin, my lips and my eyelids. They point coldness unto my face with mildness and tenderness. The air, though, is not biting cold but near point zero and a bit humid.

Hours pass by and snow covers me entirely. I’m like a snowman in meditation, filled with bliss under the blanket of snow. Then I feel a warmness from without and a light fills my gaze behind the eyelids with white. It’s the sun shining again. The snowing has gone. I can open my eyes now and so I do, thus sweeping away the snow covering my eyelids. I see a clear sky with the sun smiling upon me.

The sun is low in the sky, still, and the light cast upon the earth and me is of early summer evening. It reminds me that nothing stays still, but continuously changing as I stated before, constantly changing. Why wouldn’t I change with it?

The question is: would I change along with Nature or willingly? I choose willingly, but still, I do not crush the corolla of the wonders of the world. Instead I contemplate it filled with awe, for it has much to teach me yet. :)

I wish not to know everything but I wish to be always surprised with the new.

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